So Mongoose is planning on ending their run of RuneQuest II.
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=47370
They are keeping the ruleset and publishing it under the name "Wayfarer".
Two things come to mind.
1. Don't we already have a FRPG call Wayfarers?, http://yeoldegamingcompanye.com/wayfarersmain.htm
2. Doesn't "Wayfarer" sound a bit like "Pathfinder"?
I have a love-hate relationship with Mongoose and no dogs in this race, so I am just an observers.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
The Dragonslayers vs White Plume Mountain, Part 4 Final
They battled the Effrit on their way out of the mountain and he was quickly dispatched by couple of cones of cold. Dragotha did carry off the wizard, but a well rolled concentration check and a quick teleport spell the wizard was safe.
I kept the Hag, Thingazzard and had her using my own 3.0 rules for witches and she provided a good hazard on the way to Cave of Bones.
The Dragonslayers fought Dragotha in the end, taking some pretty serious damage almost loosing one of their elemental sorcerers. But in the end they triumphed. They collected the next part they needed, the Red Dragon tooth, and there are odd notes in Thingazzard's Book of Shadows about the Horn of Iggwilv and an item that might be what they need.
All in all the boys did good despite my general lack of energy. They may have gotten off a touch easier than they should have, so to compensate the amount of magic is not as great. Everyone managed to go up a level so next time we will decide what those levels will be. Liam wants his wizard to take a level of fighter so he can use the cool new flaming sword he found. I also suggested Bard.
Next up, into the deeps as the Dragonslayers enter the gnome vale and find The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Zatannurday: Happy birthday Z!
http://dcwomenkickingass.tumblr.com/post/5677896286/zeebirthday
http://thehappysorceress.tumblr.com/
Here is Zee and friends enjoying a birthday cheesecake, which I like because that is what I have for my birthday too.
and more,
So happy birthday Zee!
Friday, May 20, 2011
Updated Plans
Not much to this post, I am looking over the Big PlanTM I have for my Kids' D&D games.
I detailed my plan first here and then updated it here. Since then I have played some of the adventures listed, just not in the order I had them.
Of the plan I have completed:
I detailed my plan first here and then updated it here. Since then I have played some of the adventures listed, just not in the order I had them.
Of the plan I have completed:
- B3 Palace of the Silver Princess
- X1 The Ilse of Dread
- S2 White Plume Mountain
- C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness. I am going to be running this under the Doctor Who RPG as "The Ghost Tower of Inverness, Illinois" (the castle, the Ghost Tower)
- B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Been done a 1000 times. I want to run it under Army of Darkness rules.
- I6 Ravenloft. Will run this as Ghosts of Albion: Ravenloft for Ghosts of Albion.
Games I'll run under my Basic Levels plan:
- T1 Village of Hommlet (and come back to it later using the 4th ed version)
- B1 In Search of the Unknown (great dungeon crawl)
- L1 Secret of Bone Hill (been wanting to run this one forever)
Then on to some D&D4 adventures.
Basic Levels: Background and Themes
To continue on with my idea of Basic Levels for D&D4 I want to look at two features of the D&D4 game that came after the PHB was published. Backgrounds and Themes.
When you are 1st level in D&D4 you get to choose some skills to be trained in. This gives you a +5 in those skills. As you move up in level all your skills are your appropriate modifier + 1/2 your level. So regardless a 30th level character has +15 minimum on every skill and +20 (15+5) on trained skills.
A background is a bit of role-playing that asks what were you before you were an adventurer? Most times it gives you a +2 in two (or sometimes just 1) skills. So maybe a fighter was once the apprentice of nere'do well Bard and spent his childhood stealing magical items. He would have a +2 to Arcana and +2 to Thievery
Themes are new from issue #399 of Dragon Magazine (seems odd to call it a magazine anymore) and they are more or less like kits were in AD&D2. You choose a theme and it gives you some pluses to skills and then at later levels you can choose different powers at different levels. not exactly a sub-class but more of a flavor.
To do these in the Basic Level model players need to have fairly good ideas of what their character was (or is since we are starting them younger) and where they want to take their character.
At Basic Level 1 they get their Background and maybe training in 1 skill. If the class has a "default" skill then it will be that one; ie Religion for Clerics, Arcana for Wizards and Thievery for Rogues. Clerics get their Channel Divinity power (Turn Undead), but no spells yet (just like Basic). Wizards get a spell.
At Basic Level 2 they get training in two more skills (or maybe just one, still looking at the options). Clerics get a spell as do wizards. Rogues and Fighters fight get one of their combat styles.
The idea here is to build up that list of trained and background skills and introduce the Themes to the character. In the end you want all the elements in place for that 1st level character.
While I consider the details here are the past posts that have lead me to this point.
Plus it gives me a good excuse to use all of these together.
When you are 1st level in D&D4 you get to choose some skills to be trained in. This gives you a +5 in those skills. As you move up in level all your skills are your appropriate modifier + 1/2 your level. So regardless a 30th level character has +15 minimum on every skill and +20 (15+5) on trained skills.
A background is a bit of role-playing that asks what were you before you were an adventurer? Most times it gives you a +2 in two (or sometimes just 1) skills. So maybe a fighter was once the apprentice of nere'do well Bard and spent his childhood stealing magical items. He would have a +2 to Arcana and +2 to Thievery
Themes are new from issue #399 of Dragon Magazine (seems odd to call it a magazine anymore) and they are more or less like kits were in AD&D2. You choose a theme and it gives you some pluses to skills and then at later levels you can choose different powers at different levels. not exactly a sub-class but more of a flavor.
To do these in the Basic Level model players need to have fairly good ideas of what their character was (or is since we are starting them younger) and where they want to take their character.
At Basic Level 1 they get their Background and maybe training in 1 skill. If the class has a "default" skill then it will be that one; ie Religion for Clerics, Arcana for Wizards and Thievery for Rogues. Clerics get their Channel Divinity power (Turn Undead), but no spells yet (just like Basic). Wizards get a spell.
At Basic Level 2 they get training in two more skills (or maybe just one, still looking at the options). Clerics get a spell as do wizards. Rogues and Fighters fight get one of their combat styles.
The idea here is to build up that list of trained and background skills and introduce the Themes to the character. In the end you want all the elements in place for that 1st level character.
While I consider the details here are the past posts that have lead me to this point.
- Character Life-Span development, this was more for modern games, but certainly good for D&D too.
- Immortal Level D&D. My first post on mixing D&D4 with D&D Basic.
- Playing D&D with Kids. Where I first mention my desire to play both D&D4 and Basic D&D.
Plus it gives me a good excuse to use all of these together.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Tell DTRPG About Your Character
One thing that I don't typically do is talk about my characters. Nothing puts up a wall between the gamer and a non-gamer faster than talking about your character. I'll talk about my kids playing, I talk about things my players did, but rarely will I talk about a character in public. I even rarely do it here, outside of the writeups I do, but those are more about stats than personalities.
Fortunately DriveThruRPG is not me.
They want to hear all about your character and are willing to give you prizes for it.
The Tell Us About Your Character contest is going on now and you have two weeks to enter.
I do like characters. I have extensive histories for characters that have only seen a couple of games. So I might enter this contest, but I wanted to let you all know about it. Hell, my for my main withc character I can tell you what she has done every year of her 40 year old life. But for this contest you need to be able to limit yourself to 400 words.
The prizes are also nice, an Android powered tablet, and gift certificates for 100, 50 and 25 dollars.
Well worth your time I think.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/rpg_character.php?affiliate_id=10748
Fortunately DriveThruRPG is not me.
They want to hear all about your character and are willing to give you prizes for it.
The Tell Us About Your Character contest is going on now and you have two weeks to enter.
I do like characters. I have extensive histories for characters that have only seen a couple of games. So I might enter this contest, but I wanted to let you all know about it. Hell, my for my main withc character I can tell you what she has done every year of her 40 year old life. But for this contest you need to be able to limit yourself to 400 words.
The prizes are also nice, an Android powered tablet, and gift certificates for 100, 50 and 25 dollars.
Well worth your time I think.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/rpg_character.php?affiliate_id=10748
Respect My Authoritah!
Well according to at least one obscure website I am an authority on the criminology of Elizabeth Bathory.
My Elizabeth Bathory page, designed to be used with an RPG mind you, was linked out by Criminal Justice Degrees.com, on their site of the 15 worse female criminals. http://www.criminaljusticedegrees.com/15-most-heinous-women-criminals
Of course this site is nothing more than a means to get people into a name collection system that many online degrees use.
Now my Bathory page gets about 1,500 hits a month with about 1,000 of those being new visitors, and so far this one has only contributed about 24 this week. But I still had to laugh.
My Elizabeth Bathory page, designed to be used with an RPG mind you, was linked out by Criminal Justice Degrees.com, on their site of the 15 worse female criminals. http://www.criminaljusticedegrees.com/15-most-heinous-women-criminals
Of course this site is nothing more than a means to get people into a name collection system that many online degrees use.
Now my Bathory page gets about 1,500 hits a month with about 1,000 of those being new visitors, and so far this one has only contributed about 24 this week. But I still had to laugh.
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